Discussion of public health and health care policy, from a public health perspective. The U.S. spends more on medical services than any other country, but we get less for it. Major reasons include lack of universal access, unequal treatment, and underinvestment in public health and social welfare. We will critically examine the economics, politics and sociology of health and illness in the U.S. and the world.

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

More on the mythical center

Continuing my recent musings, suppose I were to tell you that the midpoint between Honolulu and Nairobi is in Philippines Bay. (I believe it is, approximately.) Would that suggest a way to resolve the "controversy" over Barack Obama's birthplace?

That would be the otherwise completely wacko Ron Paul. (And no, there are no other exceptions to Paul's wackoness. He says he wants to end the War on Drugs but he doesn't really mean it, he just wants to transfer it to state control. Ditto for all of his other libertarian pretensions. He's actually inimical to individual rights because he rejects the 14th amendment, which means that he does not believe that any of the rights enumerated in the Constitution need be respected by the states. So all of you Cheetoh-dusted Pepsi swillers can scrape the Ron Paul sticker off your parents' basement door.)

And this is the real problem with our politics. The Constitution, with its winner-take-all presidency and similarly modeled state governments, creates barren ground for third parties; while dissent on any one issue cannot bring down a government as in parliamentary systems. The result is that we perpetually have only two competing coalitions, and voters have only a choice between two complete menus, each of which is likely to contain 49% inedible swill.

I can't vote for Ron Paul's foreign policy, and the specific limitations he wants on the federal government, without getting abolishing the federal reserve and repealing the Civil Rights Act. And, now that I'm a citizen of Connecticut, I can't vote for Sen. Blumenthal's support for renewable energy investment without getting his gluttonous appetite for high tech military hardware. And you can no doubt think of your own conundrums.

There are many other big flaws in our Constitution -- not least the grossly unrepresentative Senate. The requirement that we treat it with religious reverence is preposterous. It really doesn't work very well. And we're seeing that right now, with a vengeance.